WordPress Overview

Five years ago, having a robust content managed website built would have cost your business thousands of pounds. Today, open platform solutions such as WordPress provide the means to quickly and easily get the same functionality for a fraction of the cost or in most cases entirely free.

Get your business online

Manage your own website without the need for a developer

Start generating business by getting customers to your website

This WordPress training / workshop is aimed at small and medium sized business owners and staff who are looking to get their business online quickly and effectively.

WordPress allows those with little or no knowledge of web design or programming to build professional looking database driven sites in a very short space of time.

This two day WordPress training / workshop will give you the knowledge and tools to create, manage and run a great WordPress business website.

Course Outcomes

By the end of this WordPress introduction course, you will be able to :

Get your domain and web hosting up and running

Get WordPress installed and configured effectively

Customise the look and feel of your own website

Understand how to manage a WordPress website

Setup contact forms and social media add-ons

Start tracking your website's performance

Although we are limited to only two days, you should come away from this workshop session with a well configured working WordPress website that is ready for you to expand and develop with content. In most cases, website's created during the workshop are ready to go by the end, but if you feel that you need a little more time with a trainer, you are welcome to attend our free workshop days.

Course Requirements

To complete this WordPress training course you will need a domain and access to web hosting with WordPress installed. This will be covered as part of the workshop, but you will need to pay for your own domain and hosting. There are various options available which will cost anywhere from £15 to £60 per year depending on your needs.

You will be sent instructions on how you can purchase your preferred domain and hosting prior to the course. It is helpful if you can do this before the course, although some time is available on the first day to do this.

If you already have logos, photos and other content for your website, you should bring these along on a USB stick or CD/DVD.

If you are not able to purchase a domain or hosting, we can provide you with temporary access to a test domain and hosting. You will be able to use this for the workshop, but any work done during the course will be lost at the end.

This course is aimed at non-technical individuals. This course will not suit those who are looking to develop WordPress plug-ins or create advanced custom themes.

Course Description

This two day WordPress training is aimed at business owners who want to get their business online with a low cost professional content management solution. The workshop starts by getting everyone access to a newly created WordPress installation. This will be your blank canvas to work on. We will look at the extensive WordPress interface and how it can be used to very easily customise your own website.

WordPress excels at content creation, so we will cover all the ways which this can be done using the built-in tools. Everything from news articles, product and service information, images, galleries, videos, blog posts and PDFs will be covered. We will also look at techniques for effectively managing all the content you may want to create for your website.

Once we have looked at adding content to WordPress, we will then look at structuring your website. We will create pages which make up the main navigationand other service pages for your site . These can be anything from product information pages to portfolio pages or contact and registration forms. The Wordpress widgets will provide a means to easily populate the sidebars of these pages with interesting and dynamic content.

The workshop then delves into the extensive library of plug-ins and themes available for WordPress. This is where the power of WordPress really comes into its own. There are tens of thousands of plug-ins and themes that can be bought or downloaded for free and we will look at some of the best ones out there.

By this point in the workshop you should have a good idea of what WordPress is capable of and be confident creating and managing a WordPress website. We then start to look at enhancing our basic sites with functionality such as looking at Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for WordPress and how we can provide social media support for Facebook and Twitter widgets. We will also look at we can support responsive designs for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Finally, we look at the procedures required to backup and restore your WordPress website. This is one of the most important parts of managing your own website, so we will make sure that you know what to do if or when something does go wrong.

Course Highlights

The course covers the following areas :

Getting Started

Registering your domain

Choosing the right hosting

Configuring your hosting

Setting up email and FTP

Installing WordPress

WordPress Introduction

Tour of the WordPress interface

Using the WordPress toolbar

Testing your site

Editing your profile

Configuring the site settings

Basic introduction to themes

Starting to Create Content

Posts versus Pages

Creating new posts

Advanced text formatting

Managing links and images

Adding a photo gallery

Adding external content

Organising content

Publishing content

Creating Page Content

Building basic pages

Organising pages

Applying page templates

Creating a showcase home page

Managing Media

Organising images, video & audio

Adding PDFs and other documents

Menus and Widgets

Adding widgets

Creating custom widgets

Building custom menus

WordPress and Plug-ins

Installing plug-ins

Top plug-ins for WordPress

Troubleshooting plug-ins

Working with Themes

Installing new themes from WordPress

Installing themes from the Web

Configuring themes

Using theme features

Troubleshooting themes

Building your own website

Installing your theme

Building the site structure

Adding your logos & images

Configuring SEO plug-ins

Creating contact forms

Avoiding spam

Adding social media

Promoting your website

Adding support for mobile devices

Managing your site

Backing up your site

Restoring from a crash

Updating WordPress

Course Feedback

"Its extremely well delivered, its strongest point is the amount that is covered in such a short time. The most important thing is, it has given me lots of confidence to go out there and get started with my new knowledge." - Richard

"Small groups and things explained properly with notes. Also really like the fact that we can email our tutor after the course if we have any difficulties." - Samantha

"Having attended several courses by other companies before, this course by far has been the best. The trainer answered every question I asked and was more than happy to give me advice outside the course criteria. I have walked away with more knowledge about the course than I thought I would and are extremely please regarding getting great value for money. I would definitely recommend this course and will definitely be booking more courses." - Steven @ StiNet

"A very thorough introduction to Wordpress, from the essential basics through to showing it's massive potential. Everything was clearly explained. Catered for both novice users and as well as people like myself who have some basic CSS skills too. Course notes provide were very good, useful to refer back to." - Graham @ Savvy Creative

Course Trainer

Bjorn has been involved in the web design for over 10 years and has experience developing web applications in both small and large teams of developers. Having insights into both the design and development worlds, he is able to understand the capabilities of design packages such as Illustrator, Flash and Photoshop.

Over the past few years he has closely followed the evolving standards for web development and has spent countless hours discussing appropriate markup with web designers in the industry. He has also run training courses on web standards and accessibility which stems from his vast experience with CSS web design.

Course Location

This WordPress training is run from our rooms on Jubilee Campus in Nottingham, which is part of the University of Nottingham's Innovation Park. These are serviced by a state-of-the-art tram system allowing easy access to the city centre as well as direct hourly rail services from London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Derby and Leicester.

Support Days

Bjorn, has a plethora of WordPress and technical knowledge and delivers his course with interest and conviction and I would not hesitate to recommend web studio training. Thanks two great day of learning and practice.